Aeroperu, which had been struggling financially since one of its jetliners crashed near Lima, Peru, in 1996, filed for bankruptcy in Miami on Wednesday.
The national airline of Peru, which had been flying one flight a day between Miami and Lima, had already filed for bankruptcy in Peru and stopped flying on March 9.
By filing an ancillary petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the Southern District of Florida, the airline will be able to preserve its U.S. assets, said Jeffrey Herman, managing partner of the Miami law firm Herman, Grubman & Moore.
“The goal is that the airline is going to fly again,” he said. “There are some investors looking at the airline.”
What finally broke the airline was attempting to replace its fleet of older Boeing 727s with newer more efficient Boeing 737s, Herman said. In all, the airline had 11 planes.
“They had swapped about three aircraft. But in the middle of that, they just ran out of money,” Herman said.
Aeroperu, which had routes throughout South America, now hopes to reorganize. The airline had 21 full-time employees in Miami before it ceased service and now has four.
The airline’s financial troubles started after one of its Boeing 757s took off into a dense fog and darkness and crashed in the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 2, 1996, killing all 70 aboard.
It was later determined maintenance workers had failed to remove adhesive tape from sensor ports after the plane’s exterior had been cleaned. That caused the flight crew to lose all navigation systems.
Aeroperu was one of 46 foreign carriers flying into Miami International Airport, with the majority of those being headquartered in Central and South America. The airport will miss its business, said Marc Henderson, airport spokesman.
Ken Kaye can be reached at or 954-385-7911.
